To speak French very badly, or with a bad accent, is called parler Français comme une vache Espagnole. The people inhabiting the Basque provinces obtain their name from the indigenous word vaso—mountain—which, when taken adjectively, is augmented by the final co, and thus becomes vasoco, and, by contraction, vasco—mountaineer. The French, knowing little enough of Spanish, said at first vacco, and then vacce. Thus, parler comme un vacce Espagnol meant at first to allude to the inhabitants of the Basque provinces of Spain, whose language still bears all the characteristics of a primitive tongue, and who have great difficulty in expressing themselves in French; but vacce, at a time when the Latin had left its traces everywhere, was said for vache, the peasants in many of the French provinces retaining it still. Thence arose the confusion which produced the senseless comparison, “to speak French like a Spanish cow.”
Attendez-moi sous l’orme (wait for me under the elm) implies that “the rendezvous you ask is disagreeable to me, and I will not keep it.” The type of an unpleasant rendezvous is that which compels an appearance before the judge, and it is to this that the expression here quoted originally referred. Formerly the judges administered justice under a tree planted in the open space before the church or the entrance of a seignorial mansion; hence the phrase of juges de dessous l’orme, and also that of danser sous l’orme. Attendez-moi sous l’orme means, Find me there if you can (ironically), and to name a rendezvous which one has no intention of keeping.[[49]]
Faire Charlemagne is to retire from the game after winning it, without giving the adversary a chance of revenge. This expression evidently alludes to the death of the great Charles, who, when he had become the monarch of the West, quitted this life without having lost any of his conquests.
To make unlawful profits by deceiving as to the price of any articles a person has been charged to buy is called “shoeing the mule” (Ferrer la mule). The expression dates from the time when the counsellors of the Parliament repaired to the Palais de Justice mounted on mules, and the lackeys who remained outside during the sittings of the Assembly spent their time in gambling, extorting from their masters the money they wanted for their amusement by pretending that they had had to pay for shoeing the mules. Others carry the origin of the saying back to the time of Vespasian; the muleteer of that emperor, when on a journey, having been bribed to do so, suddenly stopped the mules under pretext of having them shod, so as to give time to a person whom they had met on the way to speak to the emperor of his affairs.
Faire danser l’anse du panier is said of a cook who fraudulently obtains from her mistress more money for her purchases at market than they have really cost. The idea is that of shaking the basket so as to make its contents take up as much room as possible, and thus look worth their alleged price.
Connaître les êtres de la maison is to know the doors, staircases, passages, rooms, outlets, etc.—in a word, the internal arrangements—of the house. Êtres, which for a long time was written aîtres, has for its origin the Latin atria, in the sense of dwelling.
Je l’ai connu poirier is said of a parvenu whose sudden rise from a mean condition has not earned him much consideration. There was in a village near Brussels an image of St. John, black and worm-eaten with age, and held in great veneration by the people. M. le Curé, thinking it time to replace it by a new one, sacrificed his best pear-tree for that purpose. One of his parishioners, who had shown great veneration for the ancient statue, took no notice whatever of the new one. “Have you lost your devotion to St. John?” the curé one day asked him. “No, M. le Curé; but the new St. John is not the real one—I knew him when he was a pear-tree.”
The expression of Cordon Bleu is a singular example of the degradation of an aristocratic word, and we discover its ancestry with the same feeling that we once received the answer of a poor mason’s apprentice, who, on being asked his name, gave as his Christian and surname those of two of the oldest and noblest families in the county of Devon.
To the Order of the Holy Ghost, instituted in 1578 by Henri III., not every one could aspire. It consisted of only one hundred members, at the head of whom, as grand master, was the king.[[50]] The Dauphin, the sons and grandsons of the monarch, knights by right, were, as well as the princes of the blood, received at the time of their First Communion. Foreign princes were not admitted before the age of twenty-five; dukes and other nobles of high rank not until thirty-five; and in all cases none was allowed to enter who could not trace back at least three generations of nobility on the father’s side. The cord to which the symbol of the order was attached was blue, and the knights themselves were commonly designated Cordons Bleus.
The distinction being reserved to only a small number of persons of the highest rank, it gradually became customary to give the name of cordon bleu to persons of superior merit. The Order of the Holy Ghost was abolished at the Revolution. All the dignities as well as all the ideas which had grouped themselves around this noble order have disappeared with it. Its name is no longer used in the figurative language of France to recall great merit or a distinguished name; the last memory of the order lingers in the kitchen, and the only cordon bleu of the nineteenth century is a good cook!